The 45,000 tons and 273 meter long ship is expected to undergo testing in the Barents Sea in the course of May, a source associated with the Russian military industrial complex told Itar-Tass. In addition, the ship will undertake a 3,5 month test expedition

Then, on 4 December 2012, the ship will be handed over to the Indian Navy, the source says.

The vessel, which in Russia has carried the name «Admiral Gorshov», will in India be known as the «Vikramaditja». The ship entered service in the Soviet Navy in 1987 under the name «Baku». It was taken out of service in 2004, after which the Indian Navy announced its interest in its takeover.

The aircraft carrier has capacity to house up to 16 Mig-29K fighter aircrafts, as well as a number of Mig-29KUB aircrafts and up to ten helicopters, Vedomosti reports. As part of the deal with the «Vikramaditja», India also ordered a total of 29 Mig-29K/KUB fighter jets.

Falkland Islands: Britain 'would lose' if Argentina decides to invade nowRear-Admiral Sir John Forster Woodward - who in 1982 gave the order to sink the General Belgrano - regrets not making more of how the Falklands war was won.

*Babudom is the same everywhere,look how the victor was treated!

Quote:

Britain did not seem particularly grateful when he got home. “I wasn’t even properly debriefed. Nobody seemed to want to know.” The civil service had its own welcome. “Usually if you have been the victor in a major military event, there is some acclaim. Mine was 'a claim’ from the people who do the accounts, saying, 'We have been looking at your entertainment expenditure as admiral and observe that you haven’t spent anything over the last three months.

"So we have revised your allowance downwards and backdated it. You now owe us £600.’ That was my reward. I didn’t bother to say I had been entertaining the Argentinians.”

"That was stupid,” says Sandy Woodward, a plain-speaking man of the sea. “It was a mistake. I regret that when the war was over we agreed to play it low key,” he adds. “We should have made more noise, to make sure people realised it was the Navy that had done the job, not the bloody Air Force or the Army. The Air Force dropped one bomb on target. There were more Commandos, who are naval soldiers, than there were Army.”

Rear-Admiral Sir John Forster Woodward, known to all as Sandy, firmly believes that if he and other senior figures had made more of what they had achieved in the South Atlantic, the Navy would not now be in its present state – which he describes as “fairly dire. The Navy took itself for granted, and the country took the Navy for granted. Then we allowed it all to disappear after the Falklands.

“If we’d been louder, then investment in the services would have been more naval than it has been. We wouldn’t have ditched the aircraft carriers Invincible and Ark Royal. We wouldn’t have got rid of the Sea Harriers – an appalling decision.”

Woodward lives in a cottage overlooking water on the south coast, where he races yachts. The sandy hair has turned white and the admiral is about to turn 80, but this tall, flinty man is in command of his brief and expects to be taken seriously. “It’s not the Navy that I joined at the age of 13, or that I served in during the Falklands.

"I accept change, but not serious change for the worse. If you are a naval professional, then a Navy without an aircraft carrier and the right aircraft on board is comparable to the Swiss navy.”

That’s damning. Switzerland, of course, doesn’t have a navy. Britain will not have a working aircraft carrier until the new HMS Queen Elizabeth comes into service in 2020, and even then it may not have any jets to carry. The new Joint Strike Fighter, which was due to replace the scrapped Sea Harriers, has been delayed by a design flaw which makes it unable to land on deck. Without an aircraft carrier, Woodward believes the current Navy is also fundamentally flawed.

“What’s a navy for? Expeditionary force, which means going a long way from home. If you can’t rely on neighbouring countries to make a base on land sufficiently close to where you want to be, then you have to go by sea and take your air power with you. We simply can’t do that now. The best we can do for an expeditionary force is a day trip to France.”

If the Falklands are ever captured by Argentina it will be impossible to win them back, says Woodward. “We could not retake the Falklands. We could not send a task force or even an aircraft carrier. If we had been in this state in 1982, the Falklands would be the Malvinas. We rely on sending reinforcements by air, but that would be impossible if we lost control of the airfield at Mount Pleasant.”

He is not, however, as despairing as that sounds. “The problem doesn’t arise, because they won’t be taking it,” he says, rapping his knuckles on the kitchen table for luck. “I hope I’m right.”

His hope is based on the recent arrival of the destroyer HMS Dauntless. “We need her surface-to-air missiles. The Argentines might hope to overcome the four Typhoon jets at Mount Pleasant with a dozen Mirages and then bomb the airfield out of action, but while she’s there with her missiles they won’t try that. I’m not sure the Government understands how important she is.”

Argentina believes Britain has also sent a nuclear-powered attack submarine, or SSN, which the MoD neither confirms nor denies. As an expert submariner, Woodward sees the use. “If they want to invade, it will have to be by sea and an SSN will chop them up. They know that.”

He is less impressed by the decision to send Prince William to the Falklands as a search and rescue helicopter pilot. “What on earth are they intending to achieve?” asks Woodward, who had Prince Andrew as a Sea King pilot in his own fleet.

“To put a royal in the front line is quite inconvenient. You have to take special measures to make sure he doesn’t lose his life. That means you service his aircraft three times as carefully as anyone else’s. If something goes badly wrong, you’ll be blamed. So you protect the Royal Family from their own wish to serve. They are a liability on the front line.”

The admiral lives in a cottage called Before Anchor, but that’s nothing to do with his past. It’s a reference to the village pub, where we go for fish and chips without salad – “sod the greens” – and a pint of beer, which is called, also by coincidence, Invincible. That was the name of one of the two aircraft carriers in the Falklands fleet, the other being Hermes, upon which he sailed.

Woodward joined the Navy in 1946 as a schoolboy. Most of his career had been as a submarine commander, which he once said did things to a man’s character: “Submarines are always in enemy-controlled waters, therefore you should treat anything you see, hear or smell as an enemy. There are no friends.”

When Argentina invaded in April 1982, he was a newly appointed Rear-Admiral on an exercise in the Mediterranean. “The Falklands were as strange to me as to anyone else. I’d never been near them.”

As task force commander, he was required to tour the ships telling the crews why they were doing this. Woodward was unusually lost for words, and fell back on the blunt truth. “I said, 'Look, whether you realise it or not, you’ve taken the Queen’s Shilling. You’re now going to be invited to front up for it. Whatever you think of the problem, our job is to stop it. People will die, ships will be lost, that’s the deal. Go to it.”

Woodward says he never wasted his time trying to get his men to like him. “My ethos of command was to get respect and trust. I wasn’t going to make any effort to be liked. Some people are naturals at it. I’m not.”

He upset some fellow officers with his best-selling account of the conflict, One Hundred Days, and is about to do it again with a new edition containing his uncensored diary from the war, describing one colleague in particular in the strongest terms possible. “I was taking out my frustration in the diary, not on them. For Christ’s sake, it’s 30 years later; if they’re still upset about it, they ought to be taken out and shot anyway.”

The sinking of the General Belgrano on May 2 was hugely controversial, as the cruiser was outside the exclusion zone set up by the British and sailing away. As you would expect, Woodward is unapologetic. “It’s very simple. There was the Belgrano and two destroyers armed with Exocet missiles milling around in the southern ocean. I know from experience that while they were within 200 miles of our ships, they could have us overnight. So I wanted them removed, didn’t I?”

The rules of engagement set in Whitehall forbade an attack. Woodward knew that by the time he got those rules changed, the Belgrano would be gone. “On occasions, you have to disobey your specific instructions from home, which are already out of date because the situation has changed since they were put in place.” So he ordered the submarine HMS Conqueror to attack.

The order was intercepted and diverted to Whitehall, where his superiors understood the urgency of the situation and short-circuited the process of consultation. The Prime Minister gave permission. The torpedoes were fired. The cruiser was sunk and 323 people died.

“The fact is that because we had broken their codes, although we were not prepared to say so at the time, we knew she was going to the waiting position [with a view to attacking later]. The Argentine commander has also said that while it was deeply undesirable, it was also eminently reasonable and he would have done the same. Nobody at home ever gave me a hard time over it.”

What people fail to realise, he says, is how close Britain came to losing the war. “If the Argentines had held out for another week on land then we would probably have lost it. Our people were in the open. It was snowing. The sheer wear and tear of two months at sea in vile conditions meant our ships were wearing out. The offshore group was on its last gasp. It was as close as that.”

Three islanders, 255 British servicemen and 649 Argentines died, but when Woodward eventually got his feet on Falklands soil for the first time he was less than impressed, writing of the landscape in his diary: “Bloody awful… definitely not a jewel in the Queen’s crown.” Was it worth it then? “Yes. I don’t think I need to say any more than that.”

Britain did not seem particularly grateful when he got home. “I wasn’t even properly debriefed. Nobody seemed to want to know.” The civil service had its own welcome. “Usually if you have been the victor in a major military event, there is some acclaim. Mine was 'a claim’ from the people who do the accounts, saying, 'We have been looking at your entertainment expenditure as admiral and observe that you haven’t spent anything over the last three months.

"So we have revised your allowance downwards and backdated it. You now owe us £600.’ That was my reward. I didn’t bother to say I had been entertaining the Argentinians.”

Sandy Woodward was, however, knighted later that year. He retired seven years after that. “Life after was a bit of an anti-climax. When you’ve done that, nothing else is going to seem quite as important.”

Two decades ago, he parted from his wife and moved to the West Sussex coast. “I love the smell of the sea, even when the tide is low.” His son lives in California and his daughter in Surrey. On his kitchen table there is a scale model of a 19th-century fighting ship, which Woodward is rigging by hand.

His real vessel is being refurbished. “She is a Devon Yawl, a racing boat for geriatrics. I’ve been racing since I was 14. I’m obsessive about it. If I see another boat I’ve got to overtake it if I can.”

Idyllic though his retirement seems, Woodward insists his views are relevant. “I have stayed very much in touch with what’s going on. I don’t hesitate to tell the First Sea Lord if I think he’s getting it wrong, and he, bless him, actually does take some notice. I am, after all, the only senior naval officer still alive who has taken the Navy to war. That doesn’t mean to say I’m right, but I’m probably worth listening to. Albeit with a pained expression.”

The dream of sailors, nerds and sailor-nerds everywhere is on the verge of coming true, senior Navy technologists swear. Within four years, they claim they’ll have a working prototype of a laser cannon, ready to place aboard a ship. And they’re just months away from inviting defense contractors to bid on a contract to build it for them.

“Subsonic cruise missiles, aircraft, fast-moving boats, unmanned aerial vehicles” — Mike Deitchman, who oversees future weapons development for the Office of Naval Research, promises Danger Room that the Navy laser cannons just over the horizon will target them all.

Or they will be, if ONR’s plans work out as promised — not exactly a strong suit of proposed laser weapons over the decades. (Note the decided lack of blast at your side.) First step in reaching this raygun reality: Finish up the paperwork. “The contract will probably have options go through four years, but depending on which laser source the vendors pick, we may be able to demo something after two years,” says Roger McGiness, who works on laser tech for Deitchman. “Our hope afterwards is to move to acquisition.”

Translated from the bureaucrat: After the Office of Naval Research can prove the prototype works, it’ll recommend the Navy start buying the laser guns. That process will begin in “30 to 60 days,” adds Deitchman, when his directorate invites industry representatives for an informal idea session. Deitchman and McGiness plan on putting a contract out for the prototype “by the end of the year.”

If this sounds like a rapid pace of development for the ultimate in science fiction weaponry, there are two major explanations why the Navy thinks the future makes a pew-pew-pew noise. The first is technological. The second is bureaucratic.

From a technological perspective, the Navy thinks maritime laser weapons finally represent a proven, mature technology. The key point came last April, when the Navy put a test laser firing a (relatively weak) 15-kilowatt beam aboard a decommissioned destroyer. Never before had a laser cannon at sea disabled an enemy vessel. But the Martime Laser Demonstrator cut through choppy California waters, an overcast sky and salty sea air to burn through the outboard engine of a moving motorboat a mile away. You can see video of the successful demonstration above.

The bureaucratic reason has to do with a decision inside the Office of Naval Research to focus its laser efforts with laser-like precision. For over a decade, it’s dreamed of creating a massive, scalable laser weapon, called the Free Electron Laser, that can generate up to a megawatt’s worth of blast power. Currently, the laser blasts 14 kilowatts of light — think 140 lamps, all shining in the same direction and at the same wavelength. A hundred kilowatts is considered militarily useful; a megawatt beam would burn through 20 feet of steel in a single second.

The Free Electron Laser has its critics, including a Senate committee. And it was sucking up all the oxygen inside the Navy’s laser efforts. So, as InsideDefense.com first reported, ONR decided, effectively, to break them up into the laser equivalent of weight classes. Generating a 100-kilowatt beam is now the province of “solid state lasers,” lasers that focus light through a solid gain medium, like a crystal or a optical fibers. The Free Electron Laser, which uses magnets to generate its beam, will stay focused on getting up to a megawatt.

That, the Navy’s scientists contend, will get an actual, working laser cannon onto a ship faster. Yes, a 100-kilowatt laser isn’t as powerful as the longed-for megawatt gun. And yes, a solid-state laser can’t operate on multiple wavelengths, while a Free Electron Laser can, making the mega-laser more useful when the sea air is full of crud and pollution. But the Office of Naval Research says that lots of active, near-term threats to ships will be vulnerable to the 100-kilowatt, solid state laser.

“It’s easier to shrink down a solid-state laser [to get on a ship], and there’s a maturity here, vice the Free Electron Laser,” says Deitchman. “The solid-state laser will still deal with many asymmetric threats, but not the most hardened, most challenging threats. It’s near-to-mid term. The Free Electron Laser is still long-term.”

There’s another advantage to developing a less-powerful laser first. The Navy’s surface ships don’t yet have the power generation necessary for spooling up a megawatt-class laser — or at least not if they don’t want to potentially be dead in the water. That’s one of the reasons the Senate Armed Services Committee is skeptical of the Free Electron Laser. It’s not clear that the ships can cope with diverting 100 kilowatts of power, either, but the Office of Naval Research thinks they can, and the laser geeks are “working closely” with the Naval Sea Systems Command to make sure the scientists are writing checks that the ship’s generators can cash.

But perhaps even more important is the fact that the Navy brass is on board with a concerted push for a new generation of shipboard weapons. “This was a decision by the Office of Naval Research,” Deitchman says, “that was approved and supported by senior Navy leadership.” The Navy may be set on a smaller fleet, but apparently it wants that fleet making pew-pew-pew noises.

Seawolf Gets A Secret UpgradeApril 21, 2012: The American SSN (nuclear attack sub) USS Seawolf has returned to service after a 31 month, $280 million refurbishment. The Seawolf entered service in 1997, and SSNs typically undergo a major maintenance and upgrades after about 20 years. The Seawolf went in for this kind of work early, and the refurbishment was more extensive (and expensive) than usual for regular Depot Modernization Period work. This may have to do with the fact that the Seawolf was the first of its class. This might indicate the installation of some special equipment for intelligence missions. A sister ship, the USS Carter, was extensively outfitted as an intelligence and special operations submarine. The navy admitted what the Carter was rebuilt for but for even more sensitive missions you would want to withhold all details.

The twenty-nine 9,000 ton Seawolf-class SSNs were supposed to replace the Cold War era Los Angeles boats but Seawolf proved too expensive. Only three were built. The Seawolf was designed for the Cold War, carrying fifty weapons (torpedoes, cruise missiles, or Harpoon anti-ship missiles) for its eight 26-inch (660-millimeter) torpedo tubes. Seawolf was fast (top speed of over 60 kilometers an hour) and much quieter than the Los Angeles boats. To replace the un-built Seawolfs the 7,800 ton Virginia-class was designed. Think of it as a Los Angeles size hull with a lot of Seawolf technology installed. The Virginia-class boats ended up costing about half as much as the Seawolfs. But that was largely possible because the Virginias used a lot of the new technology developed for Seawolf.

The U.S. currently has three classes of SSN. Most are the 6,900 ton Los Angeles-class SSNs. Sixty-two of these submarines were built, and 43 are still in service. Armed with four 21-inch (533-millimeter) torpedo tubes, they carry twenty-six weapons for those tubes (either the Mk 48 torpedoes or BGM-109 Tomahawk cruise missiles). The last 31 Los Angeles-class SSNs added the Mk 45 vertical-launch system (VLS), which carries another twelve Tomahawks. If built today these late model Los Angeles class boats would cost about $1.5 billion each. There are eight Virginias in service and another 24 planned.

Intriguing documentary on about the Gallipoli landings and the hitherto unknown role of a British diplomat/spy.On Hist.Channel on Wed. 27th April.

HE WAS the Gallipoli spy who might have ended World War I countless lives earlier. Like Ian Fleming's fictitious hero James Bond, the Cambridge-educated Clarence Palmer was urbane, multilingual, self-reliant, knowledgeable about weaponry and a Royal Naval officer.

Yet as a new documentary on the History Channel this Anzac Day reveals, Palmer's role at Gallipoli remains a great unsolved mystery.

Gallipoli From Above: The Untold Story is based on Hugh Dolan's controversial 2010 book, 36 Days.

Dolan, a former Australian military intelligence officer, served during the Iraq war. His book, examining the military planning that went into the birth of the Anzac legend on April 25, 1915, upset military historians.

The Anzac myth claims the nation's identity was forged in a crucible of failure. That the first Anzac ''lions'' landed on the wrong beach at dawn with little knowledge of the formidable Turkish defences because they were led by elitist British ''donkeys''.

But the film - using historic footage, modern graphics, unexplored Turkish reports and helicopter footage of the inhospitable terrain - comes to a vastly different conclusion.

The initial Anzac landings were planned by Australians and were an outstanding success.

They took place under cover of darkness (not dawn), incorporating the latest intelligence, including aerial reconnaissance gathered by an Anzac intelligence officer who took his first aeroplane flight over the peninsula 11 days before the landing.

''All war is geography,'' says the writer/director Wain Fimeri. ''The entire Gallipoli campaign was designed to get the Allied fleet through the Dardanelles to capture Constantinople [Istanbul]. The Turks don't venerate April 25 as we do. March 18 is their important day. That's when the Turks defeated the most powerful weapon in the world: the combined British and French fleets. Six battleships were lost that day.''

When the navy failed, soldiers were brought in to secure the straits.

But Fimeri was intrigued by a side story in Dolan's book: Clarence Palmer, the British vice-consul at Cannakkale on the Asian side of the Dardanelles - guardpost to the most important waterway of World War I.

After their battleships were destroyed, the British sent a submarine through the treacherous minefields. Another disaster. The submarine ran aground, the crew captured. Only one wasn't wearing a uniform: Palmer.

''People knew about Palmer before Hugh's book,'' Fimeri says. ''But few recognised the role Palmer played. Or the great mystery of what he was doing on that submarine.

''The Turks still tell stories about Palmer. As vice-consul he was always going fishing or having a picnic on the shores. He was marking the Turkish defences. Not just the mines in the Dardanelles, but the Turkish forts, the gun emplacements.''

Palmer escaped from Turkey once war was declared and gave his carefully charted map of the challenges to an assault on the Dardanelles. Then he reappeared on the submarine.

''What was he doing there?'' Fimeri asks. ''He wasn't a submariner. But he was a fluent Turkish speaker.''

His Turkish captors believed he was a spy. They threatened him with execution. Palmer seemed to turn traitor to save his neck. ''Palmer said, 'I know about the landings,''' says Fimeri. ''He gave them the whole plan.

''But he reversed it. He told the Turks the main landing was going to be [far to the north of Anzac Cove]. The German commander in charge of the Turkish forces, General Otto Liman von Sanders, kept 20,000 men in the north because he felt that is where the main landing would be … because he believed Palmer.''

Ultimately, Palmer's deception was not crucial. The main Allied landing south of Anzac Cove failed.

As for Palmer, he survived the war in a Turkish prison camp, resurfaced as a British diplomat, and died in 1936. He was decorated for his role on the submarine. What remains a mystery is what his precise role was. ''But the hat that he was wearing on the submarine is still in the Turkish Army museum in Istanbul,'' says Fimeri. ''I found that incredibly charming.''

Russian defense ministry plans to obtain seven Project 885 Yasen nuclear-powered cruise missile submarines (SSGN) by 2021. Last six new subs will be more silent and armed with stronger missiles, reports ITAR-TASS referring to a source in the government's military-industrial committee.

According to the interviewee, the first Yasen-class submarine – SSGN Severodvinsk – will finish trials and join Russian Navy in 2012. Lead sub of upgraded Project 885M laid down in 2009, low-noise SSGN Kazan will be completed in 2015. Other five subs of this project to the overall amount of RUR 150 bln will be built for Russian Navy by 2021.

Total cost of seven Yasen-class subs exceeds RUR 200 bln. According to the source, one Project 885M sub costs as much as 1.5-2 submarines of Project 955 Borei.

"Project 885M subs will have hypersonic cruise missiles with maneuvering warheads capable to fly up to 1,000 km, deepwater homing torpedoes, rocket torpedoes and other arms, up-to-date radioelectronics, sonar system, communication and navigation facilities. Such subs will be much more silent than analogous Russian and foreign submarines", said the interviewee.

MORE than $200 million will be spent on design studies for 12 new submarines for the Australian Defence Force, as part of a $40 billion investment in submarines touted as "the largest procurement project the nation has ever undertaken".

Defence Minister Stephen Smith and Prime Minister Julia Gillard on Thursday released the Defence Force Posture Review, which outlined what needs to be done to keep the nation's military assets up to date.

The $40 billion future submarines project will eventually replace the Collins class of submarines currently used by defence.

The review also noted a probable increase in defence presence at Ipswich's Amberley air base, and a need to "ensure sufficient land and airspace is available to meet future demands".

Mr Smith said that while a 2009 defence white paper recommended investing in the Joint Strike Fighter program - for 14 new fighter jets - the project would be delayed by two years.

He said this would produce a saving to Tuesday's Federal Budget of between $1.4 and $1.6 billion, while a decision not to buy self-propelled artillery guns would save a further $225 million.

Mr Smith also said the next defence white paper would be brought forward one year, to begin in the first half of 2013, as part of a regular five-year review of the defence budget.

Ms Gillard said there would be no impact on overseas operations, equipment, or defence numbers in next week's budget, but that specific details would be released on Tuesday.

The $214 million will be spent researching the best options for design, construction and procuring the workforce to build the 12 future submarines in South Australia.

But Ms Gillard said the long-awaited update to Australia's submarines would unfold over decades, with the problem-plagued Collins class submarines able to last until 2031 on paper.

Mr Smith said that the government would not allow a gap in combat capability to occur and the government would ensure that mistakes made when procuring the Collins submarines would not be repeated.

He said contractual obligations to buy the 14 strike fighter jets would remain, and the delay to 12 of the jets would align Australia with a similar timeframe that the United States was already committed to.

What if we lic the design and build it here it would be far cheaper if we build in batches of 8 or some thing similar , you can always arm those with Uran/AK-630M and Indian electronics and we have a new class of missile boats.

The problem with lic radars and weapons of US origin ( assuming they allow to do that ) is that you end up with different weapons system beating logistics , IN is set course on certain type of radars , missiles ,electronics on its future ships ( P-15A/B ,P-17/17A etc ) and that would stay the way , there would be some odd ones like Jalvasha LPD but thats mostly one off.

Ideally we buy the design and integrate as much as electronics/radar and weapons package as possible thats standardised on other class , ofcourse we do use US systems like LM2500 GT engine that can go in.

Xcpts:Medvedev sacks Russia navy chief on last day as president May 6, 2012

* Medvedev replaces army, navy, air force chiefs in finalweeks as president

* Navy chief's fired after fire on nuclear submarine

* Air force chief had complained about restructuring

By Steve Gutterman

MOSCOW, May 6 (Reuters) - President Dmitry Medvedevdismissed the head of Russia's accident-prone navy and named anew air force chief on his last full day in office on Sunday ashe prepares to take the No. 2 post under Vladimir Putin.

Medvedev, who is on track to become prime minister afterPutin returns to the presidency on Monday for a six-year term,has replaced the heads of the army, navy and air force in thepast two weeks.

In a decree announced by the Kremlin, he dismissed AdmiralVladimir Vysotsky, whose nearly five-year stint as navycommander included a fire aboard an atomic-powered submarine inDecember and a deadly accident on another submarine in 2008.

I dont know where do these Western press get the idea of linking accident prone ship or aircraft with removal of Chief , its like saying the IAF chief or Navy chief was removed because M2K crashed or ships ended dashing with navigation errors.

The RF Air Chief and Navy Chief has served nearly 5 years on their job and was duly retired after serving that long which is very normal in RF.

What is 418-feet long, costs millions to build and can move a crew of 110 men across the ocean at a speed of 28 knots? Until last month, the answer was the US Coast Guard’s newest security cutter, the Stratton.

That all changed in April, however, when sailors onboard the brand new, 6-month old boat spotted a hole in the ship’s hull. And then another. And then another. And then another.

Now not even a year after the Coast Guard acquired the Stratton for an estimated half a billion dollars, engineers are docking the ship so that they can figure out how to fix four holes on the Stratton and also deal with an epidemic of oxidation that is causing spots of rust to ravage the boat.

Manila had retired its last fighter jet, a Korean War-vintage F-5, in 2005.It does continue to fly Italian firm Marchetti’s S211 trainer jets, which are sometimes used as ground attack aircraft against various insurgencies.

BAE Systems wins £328m submarine contractBAE Systems and its submarine site in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, have received a boost after the Government confirmed the company has been awarded a £328m contract to design the UK’s next generation of submarines.

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